Battenberg Cake
Ingredients
- 175 g butter, softened
- 175 g caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla and a few drops almond extract
- 175 g self-raising flour
- 50 g ground almonds
- pink food coloring
- warmed apricot jam, for assembly
- 400-500 g marzipan
Battenberg cake is baked as two separate almond sponges — one left plain, one dyed pink — then cut into strips and reassembled with apricot jam into the cake's famous pink-and-yellow checkerboard cross-section. The whole assembly is wrapped in a sheet of marzipan, which is trimmed and crimped along the top edges to finish.
Method
Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then beat in the eggs, vanilla and almond extract.
Fold in the flour and ground almonds.
Divide the batter in half; leave one half plain and color the other pink.
Bake each half separately (using a divided tin or two loaf pans) at 180°C (350°F) for 25-30 minutes, until springy and a skewer comes out clean.
Once cooled, trim and cut each sponge into two even, long strips.
Brush the strips with warmed apricot jam and stack them together, alternating pink and yellow, to form a checkerboard cross-section.
Roll out the marzipan and brush the outside of the cake with more jam.
Wrap the marzipan around the cake, leaving the checkerboard ends visible, and crimp the top edges neatly.
